Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

TGIF: Glenn Loury’s Collectivist Immigration Policy

by Sheldon Richman | May 27, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Glenn Loury, the economist at Brown University, often has interesting things to say. His YouTube Glenn Show episodes with linguist and social commentator John McWhorter feature valuable insights and eye-opening data about race, woke "anti-racism," and related matters. Loury is a neoclassical economist who is generally pro-market. He harbors some doubt about government solutions to social problems. But judging by what he says about immigration, his political theory is appallingly collectivist. This is alarmingly clear from his most recent video with McWhorter. (The transcript is here.) Loury...

TGIF: True Liberals Are Not Conservatives

by Sheldon Richman | May 20, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

The relevance of F. A. Hayek's essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative," the postscript to his important 1960 book, The Constitution of Liberty, is demonstrated at once by the opening quote from Lord Acton: At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition. [Emphasis added.] Who among true liberal advocates of...

George H. Smith

by Sheldon Richman | May 13, 2022 | Blog, Libertarianism

The sad news has belatedly come to my attention that the philosopher and historian George H. Smith, 73, died on April 8. He had been in poor health. I was fortunate to have known George since the 1970s and to have had many conversations with him. He was self-educated, multidisciplinary, and nothing short of brilliant. Smith wrote several books and hundreds of articles on the philosophy, history, and intellectual history of individualism, classical liberalism, anarchism, and freethought. His output was remarkable and can be found in literary and video form at Libertarianism.org. His work is...

TGIF: Alito’s Challenge to Libertarians

by Sheldon Richman | May 13, 2022 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

In his recently leaked first draft of an opinion that would reverse the abortion-rights cases Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gives Americans a choice between judges who read their personal preferences into the Constitution and judges who recognize only rights that they find "rooted in [our] history and tradition" and deem "essential to our Nation's 'scheme of ordered Liberty.'" Is that it? Neither choice seems an adequate safeguard for individual freedom. Whether one likes the result or not, Alito's draft in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health...

TGIF: Mask Mandate – Liberty Can Hang on One Word

by Sheldon Richman | May 6, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

As I mentioned recently, whether the courts protect or violate liberty in any given case is something of a coin toss. The matter could hinge on a single word. We just had a good example of that fact. On April 18 U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a Trump appointee in Tampa, Fla., ruled that the Centers for Disease Control exceeded its statutory authority when it mandated that most people wear masks when using public transportation in order to stem the spread of COVID-19. (Health Freedom Defense Fund et al. v. Biden.) The judge's ruling hinged on a single word in §264(a) of the...

Privacy as a Property Right

by Sheldon Richman | May 5, 2022 | Blog, Justice, Libertarianism

In 1993 I wrote an article at the Cato Institute that may be relevant to the current controversy over abortion and the Supreme Court: "Dissolving the Inkblot: Privacy as a Property Right."

TGIF: What Really Protects Liberty?

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 29, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, as if we needed another demonstration, that little stands between the government and our liberty. Champions of individual freedom have been properly disturbed by how much power governments at all levels have seized since the pandemic hit in 2020. To make matters worse, officeholders and public-health officials object when the judicial branch occasionally overturns their power grabs because judges are said to be unqualified to rule on "medical" matters. So, if judges furnish constitutional and other legal grounds against power grabs, we're supposed to...

TGIF: NATO and Collective Insecurity

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 22, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman

Collective security, the official goal of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, seems plausible on its face. A group of nations ostensibly concerned about a common threat agree to defend one another in the event of an attack. "All for one and one for all," as the Three Musketeers said. But like many things, the principle, even if sincerely invoked, is more problematic than the first glance indicates. This is particularly true with governments, and in no area more so than foreign policy and armed forces. Schoolyard analogies involving bullies do not hold. NATO was established soon...